


I'll Meet You There

by yourinsomnia



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 04:04:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1884627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourinsomnia/pseuds/yourinsomnia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane visits Jesse in Jack’s compound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Meet You There

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesleepingsatellite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/gifts).



He feels a heaviness in his stomach, like stones, dragging him down. If he fell into water, he is sure he would sink. It’s not like pain, because he’s never felt pain so blunt before, slowly eating away at his insides like parasites. It’s not hunger either, though the hunger is there too, dull and far away, as though he is not the one feeling it but someone else; it's as though everything he feels belongs to someone else.

_I watched Jane die. I was there and I watched her die._

He watches himself die too, that first night Jack and his crew bring him in, and he lies sprawled on the cold floor, waiting for them to come back and finish him off. Mr. White’s words reverberate through his head like gunfire shots, until he realizes that no one is coming for him, not for a while. The only thing he can do is shut his eyes and he does until it almost feels like they bleed; he scratches at his chest too until his heart, jammed in his ribcage like a dysfunctional toy, stops beating. He dies and someone else rises the next day. 

There are no days, only nights and the breaks in-between when Todd appears and herds him to the makeshift lab, and then watches over him with the air of a gentle executioner, the silence between them erased by the continuous rumble of the shackles.

When he cooks, his fingers move of their own accord. The calculations and measurements flash in his head like a projection of a silent film; nothing has color or sound. After, Todd brings him back, sometimes smiling, sometimes expressionless, and promises to come by later with food. He keeps good on his promise most nights. 

Other nights, Jesse is not even sure if Todd exists. 

On those nights the walls seem to come alive: they press down on him and he can’t get up. He lies face down on the floor, praying for a quick descent into sleep. When he does fall asleep, he doesn’t dream, he _sees_. He always sees the same boy, with sand colored hair, younger than he ever remembered himself to be, running around outside, through grass taller than him, through a forest flooded by summer sunlight. The boy runs towards a tall redwood on the outskirts of the forest, and finds a piece of wood lying under the tree’s dome. He takes a carving knife from his pocket and works on a birdfeeder that looks like it could feed a thousand birds. 

He doesn’t remember how many nights the boy has been carving it but it doesn’t seem he will ever be done.

One time, the knife slips from the boy’s hand and cuts his wrist open. The rivulets of blood drop down on the ground and slide off the blades of grass like candle wax. 

When he wakes up there is no blood, just the stench of vomit. 

He rolls over on his side, trying to get away from the smell. It is still night and will be for a long time -- he can tell by the deep cracks of the shadows on the floor and the walls from the awning above. 

His breathing echoes around the cement walls, too loud to be his own.

And it isn’t his own, he realizes a minute later when his pulse evens out and his chest is no longer being smothered by inexplicable pressure. 

There is someone else in the room with him.

“Jesse,” someone says his name and he confirms that it’s not Todd giving him an impromptu midnight visit. It’s not a male’s voice.

“Jesse,” the voice speaks again, so close to him, he could probably touch them if he extended his hand. 

Jesse. The name sounds foreign. It hasn’t belonged to him in quite some time.

He wrenches his eyes open and sits up. It is dim but he is able to discern a figure of a woman kneeling in front of him.

“Jane?” he asks, her name slipping from his lips before he’d caught hold of it, like an uninvited ghost drifting through the doorway. 

“Yes,” she replies. Her tangle of long black hair is falling in front of her face and past her shoulders, which are concealed by a dark t-shirt. Her eyes are hollow and there is a blue tinge to the paleness of her cheeks.

She is not a ghost. She is dead. It’s her corpse that came to find him. 

He laughs. Quietly at first, and then louder, so loud it feels like the laughter is being torn from him by force.

“Jesse.” Her voice is as calm as death. She stretches out her hand to touch his face. There is a moment during which he should lean into her touch but he lets the moment pass and doesn’t. 

She shakes her head, as though in disappointment. He watches her take out a cigarette and then light it up, the way he’d seen her do it countless times before in their previous lives, her long, elegant fingers flipping the metallic lighter open, striking the wheel with the barest press of her fingertips. For a split second, the shadows of the room come alive on her face and then die away when the lighter snaps shut. Her lips close around the cigarette and she lets out the first puffs of smoke dense like fog. It coils and drifts towards him; he inhales it, feeling it burn his nostrils. The sensations are almost too real and he fights the urge to laugh again. 

“I thought I killed you,” he says. 

She contemplates him, exhaling more smoke in the space between them. “Jesse, I am dead,” she says. 

“But it wasn’t me who killed you,” he says, transfixed by the cigarette dangling between her fingers, noticing the red stain from her lipstick. “I could have kept you safe from him but I didn’t.”

“No. You couldn’t have,” she says, and after taking one more indulgent drag, stubs out the cigarette.

“Why are you here?” he asks, reaching for the cigarette butt. It crushes in his hands, the tobacco staining his skin.

“Because you need me here.”

“What? Like you came to save me or some shit like that?” 

She smiles at him, a small knowing smile. And then her hands grapple for something in the shadows. She finds a crumpled piece of paper and smoothes it out, her efforts careless and offhand. 

“Do you love her?” she asks, looking at the photograph of Andrea and Brock. 

“She is dead,” he says and for a moment the blunt pain in his stomach blazes. 

“Are you going to say you could’ve saved her too?”

“No, I was the one who killed her.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, tossing the photo away. “Don’t you see that it doesn’t matter?”

He doesn’t see and he turns away from her, hiding the tremble in his hand by pressing it down into the floor. 

He doesn’t hear her move towards him but a few seconds later, there is a pressure of her hands on his shoulders. 

“Jesse,” she says his name like a mantra. “Jesse, I need you to listen to me,” she whispers, her hands sliding across his neck, towards his head until they are entwined in his coarse hair. “You will make it out of here,” she presses her lips to his ear. “He is coming and you need to be brave when he does.”

“Who is coming?” he asks, a chill crawling down his spine. 

“Another corpse.” 

***

Jesse clamps down on the gas pedal, the darkness and the distant lights rushing past him in a beautiful cacophony. He yells or maybe he laughs, he can’t discern anymore, only that his body feels like it’s been set on fire and the only way to put it out is to move, move as fast and as far away as possible. 

He throws a glance at the rearview window to watch Jane smile at him from the backseat. 

Together, they could make it to the outskirts of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [abluegirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/abluegirl) for such an interesting prompt. This was a lot of fun to write. Thank you [Melusinahp](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Melusinahp/pseuds/Melusinahp) for the quick emergency beta. *bows in gratitude*


End file.
